Looking Forward to Breaking Bread

Psalm 23; Luke 24:1-31

A Communion Meditation by Donald Mackenzie

May 2, 2004

University Congregational United Church of Christ

Seattle, Washington

“Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him.” Luke 24:31a

The reassurance that we find in Psalm 23^rd is almost as strong and palpable as anywhere in Holy Scripture. Because God gives us guidance, we have no need for anything else. In our worst moments, God is with us. Not only that, in our worst moments, God provides peace and centering and strength. So much strength and peace and centering that we can hardly believe it. We will be with God forever and ever. Amen!

How often do you feel the need to recall the famous words of psalm 23? We need reassurance often and we find it in this particular psalm, which is a song to sing about how God protects us and always makes all things new.

As we hear the story of those disciples walking along the road to Emmaus on the evening of that third day, that is, on the evening of the resurrection, we can also wonder how much they were in need of reassurance. They had hoped that Jesus would be the one to redeem Israel, to restore Israel to its former glory. The death of Jesus called all that into doubt. Now they are dispirited, trying to make sense of the events of the day. There is a rumor by now that Jesus is alive. How are they to believe that? These people are in need, as we are, of a new song to sing, a new expression of gratitude for divine reassurance.

Peter Yarrow, of Peter, Paul, and Mary, once said that one of the most important aspects of singing is that one cannot lie while singing. A song is an expression of truth or the conviction of truth. It comes from the heart of hearts, place that cannot lie. Singing also expresses what is actually in us and so when, for example, we “sing” the 23^rd psalm, we are saying (singing) things that are already in us and need to come out. The psalm gives words to our feelings, our desires, our longings, our fears, our hopes. It is a new song!

These disciples walking along this road in confusion, are looking for a new song to sing. We can see the sun setting on this important day and we can feel the confusion and the anxiety and even the faint glimmers of hope. It is a poignant time of day. The dying of day gives birth to the next day. The darkness of night is a new day being born. The writer John Cheever called this, “that preoccupation with innocence that absorbs people on a beach before the fall of darkness.” “Preoccupation with innocence” is a reference, I think, to the need to be free to feel and express the true feelings of the heart, to unselfconsciously embrace the rhythms of life, the sun setting, the darkness, the sun rising. Now, in the darkness, we will find the disciples inviting Jesus whom they take to be a stranger, to stay with them for the evening meal. They go into a house and as the text tells us, they recognized him in the breaking of the bread. Most of the time, we read this text and we understand that the stranger who had been with them was now understood to be Jesus. But now we might also understand it as in community, in that place where we experience again and again, the preciousness of our relationships, Jesus is there. In fact, that is where we “see” that is, understand, Jesus. And this is the new song. It is the song of resurrection. Yes, God does make things new and gives us the figure of Jesus as one who helps us understand the absolute importance of community. The resurrection is a confirmation of everything we know about psalm 23^rd. These people found it on the road that Sunday evening and it changed their lives and our lives forever. Amen!